


post mortem

by niika



Category: Dalton Academy Series
Genre: Abuse of the English Language, F/F, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, vaguely inspired by the beginning of The Walking Dead, zombie biology that i may or may not have taken artistic liberties with
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-14 09:50:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2187183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niika/pseuds/niika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Your dead will live, their bodies will rise- let those who dwell in the dust wake up; for thy dew is the dew of the morning, and the earth shall cast forth the dead"- Isaiah 26:19 </p><p>There’s blood in Julian’s eyes. It takes a lot of work for things to feel real; himself, the impact of his knife entering the thoracic vertebrae of someone’s spine, the kickback of a shotgun and how it feels to count bullets like heartbeats when your hands won’t stop shaking. While comatose, something in the natural balance of the world has fractured.</p><p>Waking is an unpleasant surprise, and it’s hard to let go of someone when you feel like a ghost with shattered fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PRO·LOGUE

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dalton](https://archiveofourown.org/works/679239) by [CPCoulter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CPCoulter/pseuds/CPCoulter). 



> Obligatory thank you to the lovely people behind the Dalton Big Bang, for without the challenge I likely would have left this work at 1000 words and let it gather dust in my drafts for the rest of eternity.
> 
> Tags- specifically character ones- will be updated accordingly as chapters are posted (aka I still haven't decided on whether I'm including certain characters or not, such professional, I know). Apologies for the short length of the first chapter, plans to make it longer were halted by some family antics that came up, but subsequent chapters will be lengthier. ♡

In the manner that many important things do, it began not in the absence of quiet but rather in an abundance of it.

A succession of short, hollow breaths and the gentle beeps of a heart monitor, a modest hymn for the vastness of that moment, and everything that happened afterwards, and above all else the tragedy of a story ending just as it began: a boy who loved his best friend and did not know how to quit, ever.

***

The world ended while he slept.

* * *

**2 Weeks Earlier**

The vase wobbled on the side table when Logan set it down, his fingers reaching out to curl against the porcelain and steady it. It wasn’t anything special; a simple white thing with an adornment of tiny blue flowers scattered upon the exterior with acrylic paint. It possessed a vintage feeling to it that he thought Julian would appreciate.

In any case, it was without a doubt better than the standard mustard yellow vases that the hospital issued to every room. That monstrosity had smelled of mildew and the cracks that were ever-so-slightly beginning to form in the yellow paint had made Logan frown as soon as his eyes had the displeasure to land on it.

Because this was Julian they were talking about. And decorations fracturing with damage simply didn’t compute. He’d probably be offended.

Logan had never considered himself a flower type of person before, but hell, at least they brought a little life to the room, so somewhere along the line he found himself taking over the task even though he knew there were plenty of other people who'd be willing to do it. Julian had no shortage of admirers.

That's what got them into this mess in the first place.

On that particular day the new vase held dainty white orchids. They had caught his eye on his way to the hospital, propped up in the window of a flower shop that was different from his usual venue. The florist was an elderly lady with arthritis ridden fingers, nails painted an immaculate red that contrasted sharply against the petals of the flowers.

Her Mississippi drawl had been a sweet, slow tang when she bid him goodbye with an earnest “y _our lady is a lucky one, she is. I’m sure she’ll love ‘em_.”

"I'm sure he will," Logan had tossed over his shoulder as he stepped out the door, only slightly bitter but equally ( _stupidly_ ) hopeful.

He frowned at the memory, folding himself down into his usual seat by the hospital bed and looking out the window. The weather outside provided little distraction, not offering much to look at. Clouds had gathered in uniform groups, pressing down on the grey atmosphere around them in a way that made an itch arise underneath the skin of his palms.

He hated every niche and crevice of the room- it’s hollow, unsettling quiet, like a moisture rooted deep underneath the wallpaper, rotting it slowly from the inside out.

Several seconds passed uneventfully, a stillness in the air.

Inhaling, Logan bent his fingers to dig blunt nails into his hands, getting back to his feet and crossing the room to take hold of the window latch. It opened easily, as it had the dozens of times before, and only after he dragged in several breaths of cool air did he return to the chair.

It took another minute of staring at his hands, picking at the cuticles and smoothing down the raised skin there before he looked at Julian, wishing for all the world that he could kick his heels up on the blanket like he used to on bitter winter days during Freshman year, huddled over homework with his two closest friends, and tell him about the latest explosion in Windsor and that his ridiculous hedgehog is declining food more and more and _you’re the only one he’ll take food from, don’t you know that_ , he thought fuzzily.

No change; there was never any change.

Julian’s hair was fanned out around his head and feathering his face, his hands nothing more than pale monuments laying motionlessly at his sides. It had taken Logan weeks- _weeks_ \- to stop from imagining that Julian was just sleeping, bound to yawn at any moment and grumble at the sun filtering in through the window before burrowing his face into his pillow as if attempting to become one with it.

Logan didn’t know what sickened him more. Sitting underneath a building being eaten by flames and holding Julian’s head in his hands, blood from the wound on his head pooling into the creases at his eyelids and down his chin, but still warm, still there, or this. A void, a slow breaking down of molecules under harsh fluorescent lights.

“Still here, you know,” he said, breaking the silence of the room, his voice sounding too loud for the small space. He sighed at the familiar quiet that followed.

Of course, he knew the logistics of the situation, had read through enough dog-eared pamphlets and sat through his fair share of conversations with tired doctors. Coma patients were rarely responsive to stimuli. Most were unable to hear any voices at all.

He knew the entire thing was a shot in the dark. But it was better than the alternative.

Rolling his shoulders stiffly, he sat up straighter when the door opened and a nurse entered, mouth upturned in a pleasant smile that would almost seem motherly if it wasn’t for how young she was.

“Good morning, Logan,” she greeted, the tilt of her mouth flickering into the territory of something almost resembling pity before she turned her attention to Julian. Almost all the nurses knew Logan by name now.

This one was Charlotte, he thought. She had pin straight hair that was always swept away into a bun, such a deep dark red that it looked nearly violet in some lights and as if it was aflame in others, depending on the time of day she visited. Out of all the nurses, Logan favored her. She didn’t take it upon herself to busy the room with meaningless chatter and pleasantries, such as the lady who came by on Mondays, for example, who had a deep affinity for trying to strike up conversations about the weekly weather forecast.

“Morning,” he nodded, a little late.

A second or two passed before Charlotte set about her work, fingers smoothing over the bedsheets to brush away imaginary wrinkles in the stiff fabric before they settled on the blanket that covered Julian’s feet and ended at his waist, tucked in on itself twice at the dip of his hips. She began to peel it away and Logan focused instead on watching the faint outline of bones in her hands, the way they glided mechanically under her pale skin as she worked.

It wasn’t that he was avoiding things, particularly. Moreso that he had seen this scene played out the same way countless times. It was a circuit that repeatedrepeated _repeated_ itself but went nowhere.

He’d been here before- a player in this game, if you will- and nothing got better and he couldn't do a single thing about it but stare at the nurse’s hands and notice the startling juxtaposition between Charlotte’s warm and alive and Julian’s cold and pale.

She hummed a sound between her teeth and made a cheery comment about elevated blood flow and heightened circulation to the legs that Logan was sure was entirely for his benefit only, and he sent her a hum in return, watching the vague rise and fall of Julian’s chest and the elegant shadows her hands left above him.

She smiled again, her patient curl of the lips perfected over the months of dealing with sick children and impaired elderly, though not disingenuous. “I’m serious, Logan. There is improvement. It’s hard to see if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s there.”

“Yeah, well,” Logan said sardonically, “I know what I’m looking for, and I’ll be sure to let you know when he opens his eyes.”

He’d be hard pressed to let anyone tell him that the comment was uncalled for. ‘Uncalled for’ was hearing “good news” and “small improvements” every god damn week while nothing ever actually _happened_. The first time one of the doctors had said things were looking up, Logan couldn’t dull down the erratic drumbeat of his heart, light-headed with the shock of relief. The fifth time was met with less exhilaration. The ninth time he left the room.

Because Logan Wright was eighteen years old and he was extremely tired.

Because he had been tired the moment he stepped foot into this hospital two months ago.

Charlotte pursed her lips and for a moment it seemed as if though she planned on making no further comment, but then she clicked her tongue and leaned forward, determined in a quiet sort of way. “Call me an old-fashioned idiot, but I expect he'll return to you,” she gestured to Julian with a sideways glance, and suddenly seemed older than her twenty-something years. “I think it’d be wise for you to believe in it, too.”

Logan studied her in contemplative silence, despite the piece of himself that met her words with a well-developed, cautious apprehension. “How would you know?”

“Don’t you go forgetting that I work in a hospital. I’ve seen all kinds of crazy things happen; miracles, really. It doesn’t strike me as far-fetched that your boy wakes up.”

Logan sighed heavily, scratching at his neck and forcing an eyeroll. “I don’t get why every person in this building insists on calling him that. What, did you guys vote on a poll or something? _Jesus_.”

A look of confusion crept onto Charlotte’s face, but then she laughed suddenly, touching her forehead in disbelief. “Lord help me, you haven’t any clue, have you, honey? Bless your heart.” She shook her head, a poorly hidden smirk etched into the corners of her mouth as she pointedly ignored Logan’s further questions and exasperated noises, busying herself with lifting each of Julian’s limbs a few inches from the bed, one by one, before shifting him a little.

The first time Logan had seen this in action he was indignant on Julian's behalf, to say the least. The nurse had hurriedly explained that it was done to prevent bed sores and protect the skin, but even though he understood the purpose, it still made him uncomfortable to see. Watching someone move and control Julian like that while he was unconscious.

By then it was a regular part of the day. Every few hours or so. Just another thing that needed to be done to get by.

When finished, Charlotte moved on to the IV, flicking the fluid bag lightly with her nail to assure that all was in order and tightening the tube that connected to the needle. She nodded, a satisfied dip of the chin, and pushed back a stray strand of hair that had slipped from her bright blue hair elastic while she was working. “Well everything’s looking good here. I’ll come ‘round again at the usual time, want me to grab you anything?”

Logan nodded, digging into his pocket to retrieve the several dollars of change that was leftover from purchasing flowers. “The usual.”

Another thing he liked about Charlotte. She had quickly taken stock of his coffee habits and would pick some up for him every now and again, whenever time permitted. An instant plus in his books.

She huffed, but accepted the cash. “You oughta start bringing that stuff down in a thermos, lemme tell you. That coffee shop’s probably making thousands, it stands a good chance of becoming a multi-million dollar company by the time you two are out of here.”

The suggestion wasn’t that bad, actually. The coffee that Charlotte picked up from the cafe near the hospital wasn’t even very good- a bland mixture that fell as weakly on the tongue as water. Nothing compared to Dalton’s, which was coincidentally also a lot cheaper if you took into account that he didn't have to pay for it at all.

Logan wasn’t thinking about that, though. He was thinking about the beautiful simplicity of Charlotte’s words.

He may not be a patient confined to a bed but he couldn’t get out anyway. He couldn’t leave unless it was the two of them. There was a stark clarity in the realization that he could exit the room but he would never actually get out because he kept walking back in and spending the night in chairs that didn’t belong to him and trying to talk to someone that couldn't hear him and probably wouldn't want to listen anyways.

If she caught his expression she didn't comment on it, only offered him a goodbye and a pat on the shoulder as she passed him on her way to the door.

He was left sitting in a room with a boy in a coma. It was silent apart from the mechanical thrum of the heart monitor and Julian’s eyelashes were tangled, always stupidly tangled together like that, ever since he boldly occupied the chair beside Logan's when they were fifteen, every time he had rolled his eyes at him, fallen asleep with a script in his lap, placed a pill bottle in his hands like it hurt him to do so, sipped too-hot coffee with too much sugar, and Logan’s head throbbed in time with his heart because he had never been in this much pain; he did not know this much pain was possible.

The room was suddenly suffocating. The window was still open, but the air was stale again.

* * *

**Present Day**

The world returned to Julian in a sequence of scattered images and sounds.

Fading in, fading out.

There was a ticking somewhere. Maybe a clock. Other noises, too. Faint ones he couldn’t concentrate on, that slipped from his mind like water from a rooftop because anything he tried to focus on was overpowered by a cutting, heavy pain in his head.  

His fingers twitched sporadically. Thirsty, needed water, now.

And then, nothing. Darkness again, like the flick of a switch.

***

The second time was triggered by a noise, not quite piercing but picking up tempo with alarming speed before it beeped once, twice, and sputtered to a stop, replaced by a flat ringing.

It sounded like finality.

There was a pain, starting at the crown of his skull and ripping behind his eyelids, so sharp and overwhelming that his entire body spasmed once on the stiff sheets.

Panic, proper panic then.

His eyes rolled violently into his head- god, he needed to make it stop, it hurt _so much_ , razor strings wrapped around each rib, throat dry and withholding air from his lungs, heaving, gasping it in as if there was none left, stopstopstopstopstopstopstop _please he had to breathe_ , and then...

quiet.

***

The third time?

The third time he felt nothing at all.


	2. AR·RHYTH·MIC

Had this been like any kind of movie, Julian would have sat straight up and into the arms of those who cared about him, raising quite a commotion amongst the nurses and doctors.

As it is, exactly no such things happen.

There’s no nurse at the end of his bed, no fluorescent lights casting sharp shadows on the white walls; only the smell of illness, expired bodies, death. And, on almost all accounts, there is a kind of silence. Muted memories play abstractly through his mind, a vague percussion of flames and glass against his skin, springtime flowers and quiet whispers, _still here, you know_.

"Logan?" He croaks, his voice coming out all wrong and chasing a cough from his throat, as if he's been gurgling nails.

No answer.

He blinks slowly at the ceiling, dazed, and wills his eyes to adjust to the afternoon sunlight penetrating the room. The scent of rain and something else- distinct and foul, like roadkill baking on heated tarmac- is detectable through the open window and it makes him turn his head to the side, away from the smell.

The flowers on his bedside table are what eventually draw his attention, dulling everything else to the periphery of his mind.

The vase looks like something straight out of a victorian catalogue, beautiful blue and white china, but the state of what could've once been white irises or orchids startles him into clarity. The petals are wilted and dry, some having shrivelled up and spiralled down onto the table below altogether.

He reaches out a hand to touch. The whole world slots into place when he sees the IV needle nestled in the vein just underneath the knuckle of his ring finger.

A hospital. He is in a hospital. His eyes sweep over the room: the chair beside his bed, angled awkwardly like it had been pushed aside in a hurry, the navy blue curtains framing the window where sunlight is illuminating dust particles hanging in the air, the IV stand to his right.

Oh, god. No. No. Shit. Shit. _Shit._

His breath stutters, an arrhythmic jolt of the diaphragm as his eyes dart around the room in panic, the ceiling, the walls, but the heart monitor at his side shows no acknowledgement of his quickening pulse.

The machine has not been working for days. The IV has been dry for even longer.

Julian looks unseeingly back at his hands. There’s an empty space in his memory, something that _isn’t there_ , although he tries hard to remember any words or hints or —

— _tell him or I will!_

There’s something, he has to get back to it; there is something there just out of reach. _Tell him or I'll kill him, tell him, tell him why, tell him_ , and in some small part of himself he remembers thinking that he was going to die with smoke filling up his lungs, that he would not open his eyes again, remembers his heart in his throat because he was falling and he did not stop him in time — he had to and he couldn’t and there was no one to blame but himself —

Julian's stomach lurches as a wave of nausea hits him. “N-Nurse,” he starts, the words exploding past dry, cracked lips because he needs to remember and he needs to get out of here, out of the bed and its unwrinkled sheets, not a single visible crease anywhere that indicates movement before that moment.

His thoughts return to the flowers. How long has he been here?

A long minute passes before he calls out again, raising his voice to the best of his ability.

Nobody comes. Something is off, it presses at the fuzzy edges of his mind despite how hard he’s trying to think clearly. Maybe he isn’t being loud enough. Maybe his voice has grown too stale in his throat due to lack of use. Or maybe there’s nobody there — he does not know, the thought sounds ridiculous ( _I’m in a hospital, of course there’s somebody around, of course_ ) but he does not know.

He tries again, one final time. Again, nothing in response.

The electrodes from the heart monitor come off easily but the IV tugs at his arm when he sits up. He yanks at it, hard, and it comes out of his skin with a sickening sound, like it has been submerged inside his vein for far too long. It takes longer than it should for blood to rise up to the freshly opened wound but when it does it drops down onto the stark white sheets below, crimson stains, one two three, drip drip drip.

_A blade biting a thin line into his neck, drip drip drip onto the wooden floor._

Julian tries desperately to look at it with a sense of detachment; reminds himself that he needs to find someone, but suddenly he is very dizzy, everything emptied out of his head,  leaving it hollow and carved out like a vague outline of himself.

It’s fine. It’s fine. He just sat up too quickly, that’s all.

Not a problem.

 _Water_ , he thinks reverently. Water will help. He’s so thirsty. There’s a door opposite his bed that looks like it could lead to a bathroom, so he fixes his eyes on it and focuses on his breathing, in for ten, out for ten, _one, two, three, fourfivesix._

It feels like all of the blood in his body has stayed sitting while he gasps with the exertion of standing upright. _Seven. Eight. Nine._ His knees are dangerously close to buckling under the weight of himself, but the tile is cool on the bottom of his feet and that’s all he registers as he sways, world swirling.

He counts to three again before he realizes that he’s on the floor, on his knees, blood pressure and circulation struggling to adjust. He just needs some water. There is a lack of dignity in crawling but he does not trust himself to stand and he has to get to the door. _Why isn’t anybody helping him?_

A little delirious, he thinks briefly about filing a lawsuit against the entire hospital for misconduct the moment he gets out.

But, by way of minor miracles, he manages to reach the door, open it, and pull himself up against the sink with sweaty and shaking hands, all without losing consciousness again. Huh, maybe a god does exist.

He presses his hands against the cold porcelain of the sink, and when he drinks the tap water it feels like a river baptism, cool and clear and slightly metallic because of the copper pipework in the building, but he doesn’t care, he’d drink a whole lake if he could.

Catching his own eye in the mirror is an accident. He looks, quite frankly, like death chewed up and spit out. The bandage on his forehead is beginning to unpeel and the dark bags underneath his eyes look like permanent bruises against his shallow skin, textbook symptoms of dehydration.

Cursing quietly, he fumbles with the tap to shut it off and considers peeling away the uncomfortable bandage covering most of his forehead, but ultimately decides against it. He doesn’t know what kind of wound lies underneath the gauze and isn’t sure he wants to uncover it quite yet. Besides, an old bandage is the least of his worries. The pain slowly but surely blossoming behind his eyes and pressuring his sinuses is likely going to be a significant problem in the very near future.

Right. Find a doctor. Now.

His limbs still feel like lead and every other step he takes makes him bare his teeth around deep, ugly gasps of air that burn all the way down, but at least he’s managed to regain some semblance of a center of balance. It’s a process akin to fighting gravity.

Then he opens the door leading out of his hospital room and regrets getting out of bed at all.

 

***

 

There’s this feeling, Julian has mastered portraying it in roles, it’s not so much an emotion as it is a lack of one. It happens when a character has all securities ripped out from underneath of them, a glass-shattering echo numbing every soft tissue of their body in a wave of dread and uncertainty.

It’s one thing seeing it written down as dialogue for him to read and interpret, a transcript for a movie encompassed by neat block letters and closed off with a period, neat and clean.

This is anything but neat and clean and, ridiculously enough, he finds himself wishing for a script so that he could tear up the pages and step out of it.

Acting has always been easier, after all.

 

***

 

It’s dim in the hallway. Many of the lights are out and the few that remain are faint and flicker precariously, ready to sputter out and plunge Julian into complete darkness at any moment.

His eyes are fixed on the wall, however, and real fear clenches at his chest. He has no idea how, or why, or what on earth is going on, but there’s no mistaking the blood on the wallpaper, copper brown dried into stains reminiscent of a child’s finger painting project.

He tries very valiantly not to panic. And then his foot knocks into an empty bullet shell lying discarded on the floor, one amongst many. It looks like something straight out of a horror movie, and his heart pounds so hard that it fills his entire body. He tries to think — think thinkthinkthink — war? It looks like war. Death and carnage and rot, the same smell from the window but stronger.

An eloquent hypotheses for someone quite likely suffering from a concussion at the moment.

For a split second he wants nothing more than to turn around, turn away from the hall and the door and everything on the other side of it, and it terrifies him just _how much_ he yearns to go back to sleep in that moment, how much he yearns to disappear because his life has been so out of joint for so long and he knows — he _knows_ — that he’s responsible for hurting people who didn’t deserve it. His memories cannot fully articulate it but it is true, he can feel it in his gut.

It feels fitting to wake up to ruins. It’s what he left behind, nothing less and nothing more.

It’d be so easy to call a spade a spade and close the door behind him and never come out again. But, then again, that wouldn’t be him;  it’d be in direct violation of how ridiculously stubborn he is. And he has to know what happened to his friends, even if it’s just through a phone call or an email or a text.

He can’t focus on how much it hurts to move because all that matters is getting answers and letting someone know that he is sorry, so _damn_ sorry. It doesn’t take long for him to reach the end of the hall, all things considered, and he turns the corner quickly, pushes himself to go faster when he sees a reception desk. He doesn’t even bother to look around as he rushes to it.

First mistake.

He trips over something and just barely manages to stop himself from falling over altogether. And he can’t figure out what caused him to stumble, can’t quite make out what it is on the floor until he squints and his vision adjusts and _oh god_ –

A body. There’s a _body_ on the floor. It’s twisted and missing chunks, like something had reached into it with claws and systematically tore through the skin, taking what it pleased and leaving the mangled remains on the tile floor in the middle of Ward 6.  Long red hair is the only identifying feature, everything else broken and eyes opened wide in some sort of macabre mockery of life.

Julian tries to scream but he can’t. His entire body is literally _numb_ with fear and he gags on the smell curling itself deep into his throat and underneath his tongue. This can’t be real, it can’t be real it _can’t_ be real, he’s still sleeping and he needs to wake up because what’s happening now isn’t more than a nightmare brought about by morphine and one too many horror movies made by directors fond of fake blood.

The only thing he can hear are his own gasping breaths and the thumping of his heart as he scrambles away from the corpse and launches towards the reception desk, movements uncoordinated because he can’t manage to make his legs move properly in unison anymore.

The phone is located between two stacks of paperwork and he grabs it like it’ll give him leverage, even though his hands feel so detached and clumsy that he fears he’ll drop it and be unable to pick it back up again. A jumbled mess of people races through his mind, telephone numbers playing at the ends of his shaking fingertips. He settles on Derek after a moment of hesitation, his friend’s number one that he has permanently memorized, and manages to dial him in one go despite everything.

The question of what to say only strikes him as he’s lifting the phone up to his ear.

‘Hi, there’s a dead body approximately four meters away from me and I can’t quite breath and where is everyone and what in the ever-loving hell happened?’

It sounds adequately dramatic, and the situation actually happens to warrant it this time. Though, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to worry about saying anything at all. The bottom drops out of his stomach at the silence emanating from the receiver.

The line is dead.

He slams the phone back down onto the desk in frustration, wincing at how the noise echoes through the quiet halls. An image of the woman behind him, a pile of haphazard flesh and bones, flashes in front of his eyes like an awful residue left behind under his nails and something inside of him wants to be sick, but his body simply seems to be missing the ability to throw up, as if everything inside his stomach has withered and dried up.

He knows with a frantic certainty that he has to get out of the building and that he’s going to have to do it alone. While the small part of his brain still clinging to rationality tries to work out in what direction the nearest exit is, he tries to dull the bright flashes of jagged pain centering in his legs, curling around his skeleton and pounding at his head. His body is no longer familiar with such sudden amounts of urgent movement and, realistically, is physically incapable of supporting its weight for much longer.  He can only hope to _hold in there_ for a little bit more, just a few more minutes—

Left. He chooses to go left and hopes with every part of him that it isn’t the wrong way. When he reaches another set of doors his hands tremble as he pushes them open, but he keeps going, adrenaline a tangible fluid in his bloodstream. The following hallway is empty except for an abandoned wheelchair flipped over onto its side, and somehow that in itself hits him in a powerful way, a blunt impact of alarm right in his stomach.

Inexplicably, he cannot shake the feeling that the halls are leading him along like a lamb to slaughter.

And then, as though the nightmare has been broken, he spots an exit sign. The red luminescent glow is dying out and barely there, but it still stands out amongst the darkness of its surroundings. He pauses, takes it in with a breath of relief that makes him feel even weaker in the knees than he already is, and then he’s running towards it like his life depends on it, because it feels like it does, like if he stays in place a moment longer the walls will swallow him up in a way so inconceivable that it’s terrifying. His lungs _scream_ at him, and he can’t quite feel his feet the way he knows he’s supposed to; it’s as if they’re disattached from his field of perception and he no longer has agency over them.

He narrowly avoids crashing into the door. It’s heavy and makes an ungodly screech when he opens it, but that’s nothing compared to the absolute darkness on the other side. Unlike the main hospital hallways, the emergency exit has no lights inside (or at least none that are still functioning). It’s like a flashback to children playing make-believe, refusing to go into their damp basements and cold cellars because of the monsters that lurk in their imaginative worlds.

He’s never wanted a flashlight so badly in the entire span of his life.

 _Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm_. It’s a mantra in his head that does little good. He feels wrong footed and uncentered and the first few careful, measured steps he takes are barely enough to get him past the door frame because he can’t stop imagining tripping over something and landing directly on top of another decaying human being, another unexplainable causality.

Another two steps and he can no longer reach out far enough to hold the door behind him open. It shuts with a heavy, purposeful thud when he lets go of it. Arms held out in front of him, he moves them around blindly, half-afraid for his fingers to come into contact with anything and half-hoping for something to hold onto. He feels a strange sense of vertigo, like when someone is suspended in a sensory deprivation tank and cannot tell up from down. Silence hangs in the air.

Despite all of this, he tries to move systematically. It’s difficult not to lose all sense of oneself in a situation such as this one, but it only takes a few more shuffled footsteps before his hand bumps into something cold, solid, and metal. A railing. Just in time, too, because the next step he takes results in a small drop, and had he not been holding onto something he would have surely lost his footing and fallen.

He clenches his fingers around it so tightly that his knuckles turn white and only then does he take another step down, resisting the ridiculous, stupid urge to discard the caution weighing at his shoulders and just hurl himself down the steps, one after the other, and if he’d fall he’d fall because a part of him thinks that bruises and the white-hot slam of his body against the concrete below would feel better than this, as long as he could reach light again and find a way out faster.                              

He discards that thought nearly immediately because he cannot afford anymore injuries. He cannot afford to be an even bigger liability.

And so it goes. One by one. Every step seeming painstakingly slow even though they’re bordering on frenzied. He makes it down two flights before he has to sit down and rest his head on his knees, breathing hard and feeling incredibly weak and insubstantial. He used to be able to run a mile and hardly get winded, and now it feels like his ribcage is unraveling and making room for his lungs to give out.

 _Not surprising you got left behind_ , he tells himself. He can’t imagine why anyone would want to take on such an unnecessary burden.

And then, for some reason beyond his comprehension, he remembers a voice saying, ‘ _I’m not leaving here without you_ ’, shouting it with such a hopeless vindication that it’s beyond rationalization for him.

It’s quiet apart from the sound of his breath clawing at his chest and he thinks about clomping down the Stuart staircase on the first day of sophomore year, Logan waiting at the bottom and telling him, indirectly, to hurry up with empty threats of no coffee, and Julian knows that the voice belonged to Logan just as much as he knows that Logan could not wait at the bottom of staircases for him forever, burning or not, and he does not blame him. He has only ever blamed himself.

 

***

 

It takes fifteen minutes and three more flights of stairs for him to reach the bottom.

He tried to conserve it but his strength has ebbed out almost entirely, for he is sick and thin and tired, yet strong in his determination to not let himself stop now.

His hand wraps around a handle after another moment of searching, made easier now due to the small cracks of light coming from underneath the door. He does not account for how bright it will be when it is opened fully.

Being blinded by light is entirely different than being blinded by darkness. It _hurts_. He shields his eyes with his hand and waits out the throbbing behind his eyelids, allows himself to slowly take in the new surroundings when he can stand to look at them properly.

He finds himself at the side of the hospital, facing the parking lot. Only, it isn’t filled with cars.

It’s been renovated into nothing short of a mass graveyard. Some of the bodies have gotten the dignity of being covered with white sheets, but many lay overflowing at the edges, spilling outside the lines and piled on top of one another.

Nothing— _nothing_ — he has ever gone through in his life could have prepared him for this. He stumbles back, recoiling from everything he sees in front of him like the world has literally been tugged out from underneath him (it has).

The sun continues to shine, unwavering, as he manages a mere three steps forward before he’s overcome with the sensation of nausea once more, only he can’t hold it back this time and he can’t actually vomit either, can only dry heave because of how empty his stomach is. Again and again, wave after wave until his bones tremble and his esophagus feels scarred by the awful noises leaving his own mouth.

_Oh, God. Oh, God._

It takes all he has to stop the convulsing of his stomach and continue to stumble forward along the gravel and stones that grate and sting at the soles of his bare feet.

No. No. This can’t be happening. Something has changed and it’s all terribly wrong. He needs to wake up properly, there has to be something wrong with his brain, there has to be, he has to — he presses his hands to his eyes, nails digging into his skin so hard that it hurts, “Wake up, wake _up_ , _please_ ,” but nothing he says works, no words are enough.

The bodies bake underneath the warm sun. It smells unlike anything imaginable. It’s strange how quiet it all is to step into the aftermath and to have no idea how it got there.

He has no idea how it got there and, above all else, he has no idea if any of this is real or if he’s just experiencing some sort of elaborate psychotic break.

No, he thinks. He just needs to get away from the hospital. He needs to be somewhere else and then everything will be okay. He’ll find someone and he’ll get help and everything will be perfectly fine. Because he isn’t the type of person who breaks. He always manages to be fine and this will be no different. No, no different at all.

He leans against the wall of the hospital for a mere moment, closes his eyes. When he opens them again he spots movement in the periphery of his vision and his heart skips an entire beat before he realizes that it’s the shape of a person, a good couple of meters off in the distance and seemingly approaching him, albeit slowly.

Thank God, or Satan, or whatever deity responsible for this, he doesn’t care. He’ll send them a personalized thank you card and sing chants to them around a campfire for all it matters.

Pushing himself off of the wall with a newfound determination, he focuses on closing the space between them in the shortest amount of time possible, but the closer he gets the more his relief is replaced with confusion. The man’s posture is off, like someone completely drunk out of his mind, so much so that he can barely walk straight.

And then the confusion is replaced with fear.

The man’s features are twisted into an ugly expression, and his face, there’s something wrong with his _face_. It’s distorted, his jaw sagging and pulled out of place, skin failing to stretch so far and cracking apart like chewing gum stretched too thin. He’s so close now that Julian can tell that the color in his eyes has been completely replaced by white.

Unfathomable horror grounds him in place and it’s too late, he couldn’t run even if he tried, the man– the monster is within arms reach and its jaw moves wide open, unnaturally large, its rotting teeth visible while Julian scrambles back a few steps uselessly, letting out a wordless, choked sound of terror that barely makes it past his lips.

What happens next occurs so quickly that he doesn’t have any time to process it.

There’s an impact. It comes from the wrong direction. Julian’s grabbed from behind, a pair of  hands underneath his arms pulling him back and flinging him off to the side. He collides into the ground _hard_ with a strangled cry of pain, and then all he can see is an array of flashing lights in front of his eyelids.

He hears multiple pairs of footsteps and the loud thud of something heavy hitting the ground not too far away. Then, even closer yet, an unfamiliar male voice saying something, surprise and urgency lacing his voice. All Julian manages to catch before he blacks out is, “Wait, _wait_! Is that _Julian Larson_?”


End file.
